Sorry HTC, There Can Be Only One Smartphone Per Operating System

HTC has reported a significant drop in their quarterly profits, with Q2 2012 almost 58% down on Q2 2011. The Taiwanese smartphone maker puts this down to issues around Customs clearance in the US and lower sales of their handsets in Europe. HTC should be concerned about the latter, because those sales numbers could be the sign of a worrying trend.

HTC's big play in the sales channel this quarter has been the One range, with the One-X leading the charge. The Android based handset has been overshadowed by the steamroller of the Samsung Galaxy S3.

Before that, HTC was given the honour of being the first LTE Windows Phone in America with the HTC Titan 2. How did that do? It was dwarfed by the Nokia Lumia 900.

Windows Phone and Android are two mobile operating systems which are arguably available for any manufacturer to use. iOS and Blackberry are already heavily identified with the hardware from their parent companies, and over the rest of 2012 Samsung and Nokia will seal their market perceptions as 'the Android phone' and 'the Windows Phone'. If they manage that, then the momentum of the respective platforms will remain with the two manufacturers and not with HTC.

If you wanted to add another reason why Nokia went with Windows Phone, rather than Android, I'd lay good money that the Finnish company thought that in the short term they could never be top dog in the Android world - should they have tried to hold in second place with Android behind rivals Samsung, or be the top dog in Windows Phone? They went with the latter, and avoided the fate that HTC are approaching.

The smartphone world is turning out to be a "winner takes it all" market place. Nokia has won the Windows Phone market. Samsung has won the Android market. There's nowhere for HTC to go except into second place, and it doesn't look like the consumer is ready to seriously consider any of the second tier devices.